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Palestinian-Israel conflict

Merkel tells Abbas, two-state solution only alternative

The two-state scenario of Palestinians living alongside Israel remains the "only sensible alternative," Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin. The Palestinian president is also due to visit Brussels.

Merkel indirectly warned Israel on Friday that its expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank would lead to "erosion of the two-state solution," that would also put Israel's future at risk.

"I still do not see a reasonable alternative to the goal of a two-state solution," Merkel said in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump's suggestion last month that a Palestinian state alongside Israel was not the only solution.

Abbas, speaking alongside Merkel at a Berlin press conference, thanked Germany for what he termed German political and material support provided to improve Palestinian institutional structures.

Israel's ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsmann, told Germany's "Nordwest-Zeitung" newspaper on Friday that Israel was not against the two-state solution but insisted that Palestinians return to the negotiating table, without pre-conditions.

Renewed peace efforts?

Peace efforts lead by the former Obama's administration's secretary of state John Kerry collapsed in 2014. One of Trump's top advisers, Jason Greenblatt, visited Israel and the Palestinian territories last week for talks on both sides as Trump issued an invitation to Abbas.

Israel has continued to build settlements in the occupied West Bank - seized by Israel in a 1967 war - and where Palestinians want to establish their state.

Statistics on settlements

On Wednesday, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics published figures, showing that ground was broken on 2,630 housing units last year compared with 1,884 in 2015.

That figures excluded East Jerusalem, also occupied in 1967 and later annexed.

Some three million Palestinians live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israeli settlers amount to some 200,000 in east Jerusalem and 400,000 in the West Bank.